Communication

We had a 27 MC cityband transmitter/receiver), but we never used it.

Walkie-talkies to communicate when we travel in two cars with family or friends;

We had a borrowed satellite phone with us, mainly to be able to receive urgent messages from home; however, as both purchase price of the phone and subscription fees are high we later replaced it with a satellite messenger . This solution is much less expensive and serves the purpose just as well;

For less urgent issues we use mainly WhatsApp and email. In most countries we bought a prepaid SIM with data package;

WiFi was available at many camp sites in South America and increasingly in Africa. Check iOverlander for details per camping;

In Iran, Sudan and to a certain level also in Uganda we experienced restrictions in internet access, for example Facebook or Weebly, the site that we use to create our website. We used some VPN-tools to circumvent the restrictions, but access stayed difficult and became slow. Make sure that you have downloaded and configured the required apps before you enter a country with restrictions. we also have sent a newsletter instead of updating the site if that was impossible (also if the internet was too slow). Sites and apps to look at: http://proxy.org/, http://zend2.com/, http://newipnow.com/ or http://www.securitykiss.com​.